DZ Deathrays’ track-by-track guide to new album R.I.F.F

As Brisbane rockers DZ Deathrays unleash sixth album R.I.F.F, Shane Parsons lifts the lid on the songs that make up the record (not including three interludes). Dig in…

“Lachlan [Ewbank, guitar] came to me with the riff for this song and it all really came together quite quickly. The lyrics give a nod to AC/DC with the ‘Oi oi ya paranoid’, and I think at the time I was thinking about the way I kept questioning myself in different aspects in life. Loosely it’s about that, wanting to go in a certain direction with something but having this lingering thing stopping you or setting up roadblocks here and there. We really loved this song as it had so much tension being centered around a single note for the majority of the song. When we got into the studio to track the guitars properly we added a few extra notes which made the release back to the single note riff sound massive. The track was a real collaborative effort with Simon [Ridley, drums] and Nathan [Sheehy] – who produced the record with us – putting the drums together, Nathan had a particular direction that the drum performance needed to go to and once we got it all together it was a really fresh approach to that part of the song for us. There’s also still some demo parts in there too, including Eileen yelling ‘Oi oi ya paranoid’ into a phone after chorus one and the out of phase claps that bring in the song.”

“Hope For The Best started as a kinda surfy garage riff I was playing at home on my acoustic. The verses really lean into that world and then the chorus is one of my favourite parts of the record. I’m just talking about my life… 20 years playing music, feeling sore and at times worn out but still loving it and I can’t think of doing anything else. I’ve always found that music has given me purpose in life, it excites me and challenges me like nothing else. One thing I really love about this song is the intro: it gives me The Who vibes and feels like it’s going to be a really good one to play live.”

“The idea of this track was to have an entire song that revolves around a single riff. I’ve always been the type of musician who loves to jam as many ideas into a song as possible but on this one I wanted to challenge myself and focus on one bassline and work as many lyric ideas around that one idea as possible. Lyrically it’s a doomsday anthem about destruction, weird you can have fun saying that we have royally fucked up. The drums in this song are some of the best on the album, we used Simon’s drum take and chopped it up alongside samples and treated them with different FX depending on where they came from. I love the BVs in the solo section, they remind me of MC Hammer’s Can’t Touch This.”

“This is one of the more punk tracks on the album. Anyone who’s ever felt like there’s something that’s always hanging over their head or follows them no matter what they do in their life might relate to the idea that the thing that is the shadow not only follows you, but is a part of you. Whatever it is in your life, your work, your obsession or whatever, if it’s always there no matter what then it’s probably pretty important to you. I love the scene change in the bridge in this song, it reminds me of Supergrass, who I love! From demo to final recording this song didn’t change too much but one thing that really helped was in the verses we started dropping out instruments here and there to make the parts more dynamic. That was a really fun way to approach the song while in the studio, it made the song feel more live and messy, almost like happy mistakes happening and then the band getting back together right at the right time.”

“During the pandemic lockdowns we wrote a lot of songs, and this one was the one that evolved the most. King B was a riff that Lachlan sent me that has been manipulated to fit in some chords that I put together. We did about 17 versions of the demo before landing on this arrangement… I knew that there was something special about this song and put more effort into it than any other track on the album. Essentially it was a completely different song at the beginning – the lyrics were completely overhauled as the previous ones kinda had no direction. Then one day all these one came flowing to me in about 10mins, I wanted a party song, I wanted a track that was about getting people together and feeling the energy of that. That’s where this song ended up and it’s my favourite on the record. King B was the name of the riff and well, we celebrate it. It’s one of the biggest departures for DZ, starting a song with big synths and acoustic guitars, then dropping into one of the biggest riffs we have written to date, quickly deviating to more grinding synths, then a piano section then it’s riff to the end. Quite the adventure.”

“Another one of Lachy’s crazy ideas where the track swings way more than anything we have done before. He had the riff which sounded like something Battles would have done, it sounded glitchy and had triplets in it. I think the main hook came to us quite quickly – ‘My mind is eating me alive’ – and I tried to make sense of that. The idea of being completely obsessed with the news, information that was life-changing, and everything else slowly getting drip fed to us daily was what was happening and tends to still happen but to a lesser extent. I guess that is where my brain was taking me, this obsession with doom and trying to block it out but almost feeling addicted to it. I love how this song introduces new melodies in each section, it really evolves as it moves along. The drums make me want to air drum; the guitars make me want to bounce my head.”

“This track started with the guitar idea, with some repeating parts and simple progressions underneath. I put the first verse together with this kinda spoken-word thing, trying to paint a pretty subjective, obscure picture questioning purpose and looping it into a night out in the city. It's weird and I love it for that. Lach and Simon put the drums together for it with Talking Heads in mind and once we got into the studio to track the guitars properly Lachy added all the little stop-start guitars in verse two and the song really came to life.”

“This was one of the first songs we wrote and recorded for the album. Simon and I really loved it but then I sidelined it while other tracks were coming into fruition later on coming back to it and bringing it back on to the album. ‘Man, it’s gonna eat you up…’ It’s all about something you let consume you and how to break away from it. This track actually had the drums recorded ages ago in Brisbane with Danny Harley – aka The Kite String Tangle – in his studio. The band didn’t see each other for about a year so we were just recording bits and pieces wherever we could. We really loved the take that Simon and Danny had put together and just kept building on it, changing the key a few times until it felt right. Right before we went to mixing I gave it a little rearrangement after some feedback and expanded the song a little more and now I feel like it’s one of my favourites on the album. I love the general feeling of the song, it reminds me of a mash up of Bloc Party and Fucked Up.”

“This was a late addition to the album. It started out as an acoustic song that sat in the world of Gorillaz with heaps of atmospheric production swirling around in the background. This one is actually all played on acoustic guitar, of course with added distortion. Then Lach added the bendy synth guitar that really does its own unhinged thing and I shuffled the chords of the song around to fit that riff a bit more. This track was a real experimental song for us, we worked with percussion loops that trickle throughout the song. Lyrically this one is all about a particular time of your life where it’s wild and carefree and destructive and getting through to the other side of that.”

“Sonically this track leans toward Nirvana and sits with songs like Shadow Walk on the record. Lyrically I was inspired watching the BLM protests in the USA on TV and seeing the passion and chaos that was erupting over there. Seeing people stand up against the police brutality and then having the city get shut down was something I had never seen before in my life. ‘There’s no walking on the sidewalk’ – I think encapsulates what was happening there at that time.”

R.I.F.F. is out now via DZ Worldwide.

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